Cams

Digital cameras are nice to have. But I think it's getting excessive and some people take it too far, to the point where we've become tired and super-satured with photos.

I think there's a certain nostalgic appeal to photos from the pre-digital camera era. Back then you knew you only had a finite number of photos you could take, and you knew these photos would cost money to develop, so you knew you had to make damn sure that your photo came out ok. And so every photo you took was with much diligence and care, because you were seemingly taking the photo "blind", with no real knowledge of how it will turn out.

And then you'd take it to Shopper's Drug Mart to get your film developed, and then you'd pick it up in a couple of days and open up the envelope in eager anticipation of how your photos came out. Scanners were expensive in those days, and you couldn't simply put your pics upon the web by hooking your USB cable up from your laptop to your camera. No, to share your pics you'd actually have to like, distribute the film by hand.

This was how things were done as recently as 2001. But now all that seems really archaic.

Digital cameras have taken away from the thrill of photography. Now that anticipatory eagerness is gone. No longer is there that week-long/month-long gap between when you shoot your pic and when you develop the film. Now you'll see that photo took in a second. And if it sucks, you do a reshoot. Where's the thrill in that? Not to mention you have so much capacity, and so you can take photos at whim. So people take photos of all kinds of random inane crap. So you can go out one night and come home with 100 photos. What results is super-saturation and, as with any good with negligible cost, the value of each individual photo diminishes.


Here's a nice photo from the pre-digital camera era. This is a photo of a few of my schoolmates in Grade 9, circa 1999. You can tell the picture is dated from the boxy gray car on the street and the dorky wire-rimmed glasses. And, as with any photo that's been scanned, there is a grainy quality which adds to its rustic charm. Call it our generation's version of the black-and-white photo.